Nothing beats a week-end contest, and this time is another great title here at SoftwareContest: Advanced SystemCare Ultimate 8 by IObit. The prize here consists of 10 full licenses that are valid for 1-year, with a value of $49.99 each so the contest’s value is 1 cent away from a full $500. The rules are dead simple just as usual:

Do at least 1 action via the contest widget below to get 1 entry or do them all to get more chances at this

Don’t cheat, meaning participate with a single account per IP or otherwise you might be banned. If you want more chances, do more actions.

Each license is valid for 1 year, just as purchased via their main website.

Is the contest real and legit? Of course it is, just like the previous contests where the winners received their licenses. Also, here’s a proof of what users that usually purchase Advanced SystemCare Ultimate receive which you’ll get too, if you’re lucky:

Below is the widget you can use to participate in the contest for a chance to win the most popular system care suite, Advanced SystemCare Ultimate:

ASCU is a suite that does everything from protecting your system from viruses and malware, to other security threats, system slow-downs and crashes. It includes an anti-virus engine that’s based on #1 ranked BitDefender antivirus technology (see the previous post about BitDefender to see they truly are one of the top antivirus vendors). It also incorporates their own technology for detecting/removing malware and ultimately protect your computer.

Aside the computer protection part, ASCU has the ability to tune-up your system and make it run smoother. Is your computer running a bit slow and you keep saying an OS re-install will solve it? While this is true, a suite such as ASCU does the clean-up and optimization without needing to re-install your system – tested on a laptop of mine that was older than my cat.

Now one interesting thing about this optimization suite is the fact that it’s not interfering with other security software. Usually when you install an antivirus from one company, it urges you to remove any other antivirus you might have to avoid some sort of antivirus-hybrids I guess – well with Advanced SystemCare Ultimate that’s not the case, it lives in harmony with ESET for instance on my laptop and nothing awful happened so far. I guess you could say I have double-protection.

IObit has several versions and the Ultimate one – you guessed – is the most feature-full as you can see in the comparison table below (I know, I just want to brag a little about how top-level this is):

About Advanced SystemCare Ultimate 8

Because ASCU has something like 40 different tools in a single suite it’s going to be difficult to explain them all, but I’ll try. You can think of this suite as an ANTIVIRUS, combined with ANTIMALWARE, combined with TUNE-UP tools. As if BitDefender was married with Ad-Aware and had a CCleaner baby. After a quick install, what I liked most is its dashboard. You have this dark dashboard that looks as if you are going to start piloting a plane. The most click-itchy part is the fact that it has on its action pages big buttons such as “Turbo” and “Clean” which actually do 1-click optimizations. As in you can simply click a button and have it take care of everything. Sure, if you want to go deeper you can start delving and changing all its settings, but isn’t it cool to have a simple way of telling it “Look, I’ve installed all sorts of crap and now my system is slow – HELP ME!”.

Here’s an overview of the most important tools ASCU has to offer:

Anti-Virus. Smart decision from IObit to integrate a third-party antivirus solution, as this way they can focus on other parts leaving this protection part in the hands of BitDefender. You can enable real-time protection, surfing/homepage/plugin/toolbar protection for your browsing habits, as well as enabling the firewall and keeping everything on silent mode (no decision-making pop-ups). Of course, once enabled the antivirus can do a system scan (on demand or scheduled) and will show you quickly if it needs user input with Fix Now buttons (i.e. updating the antivirus database).

System Care. Now that virus protection is taken care of, the system optimization part comes in. The coolest part is that you have a big SCAN button that will do the following actions once you won’t resist the temptation to click it: remove spyware, scan and fix your registry, sweep browser history for privacy issues, clean junk files, boost your internet , fix shortcuts, defragment your registry, scan your disk, … I’ve intentionally omitted a few tools, but the screenshot below shows them all, basically everything you could think of for optimizing your system.

Turbo Boost. Want to get the most of your computer resources as you prepare for gaming? Or you want to work on your computer and want it prepared for that? There’s a TURBO mode in ASCU which will let you pre-select what you want to do (Work, Play, Save energy) and with a simple click it will do its magic. This basically stops some system/non-system services and apps, some of which are un-necessary anyway.

Action Center. This is where you’ll be able to see what other programs from 3rd party sources need updated (i.e. Java), plus actions from other programs that integrate with ASCU and are developed by IObit (i.e. driver updater).

Toolbox. I’ve left Toolbox last but it’s actually the most comprehensive toolbox I’ve seen in an app and has so many tools you could work with. You can uninstall programs, manage the programs that start-up, clean your registry, optimize your RAM, clean your disk, defragment your drive after scanning it for problems, undelete/shredd files and so many others. When I thought they were over, I’ve seen a “Show more tools” link which showed 6 more tools, so I believe it has about 30 different tools to clean, repair, optimize or protect your computer. A suite for power users as well.

Advanced SystemCare Ultimate saved my laptop from an OS re-installation, so if you’re pondering a reinstall as well give it a try first. They do have a free version, though not as advanced as this one it’s still good and might save you the time by freshening up your system. Have you played with Advanced SystemCare in the past? Then please leave a comment and tell others how good (or not so good) it is – every opinion is appreciated.

P.S. Don’t forget to subscribe to be announced when the winners are picked and also when a new contest is published.